The income convergence literature suggests that poor countries can catch-up to rich ones conditional on sharing certain characteristics with rich countries. Good institutions such as strong property rights and rule-of-law are key amongst those characteristics. From a policy perspective this is...

We report that the price of a 6.5oz Coke was 5¢ from 1886 until 1959. Thus, we are documenting a nominal price rigidity that lasted more than 70 years! The case of Coca-Cola is particularly interesting because during the 70-year period there were substantial changes in the soft drink industry...

In this paper we outline (i) why ó-convergence may not accompany â- convergence, (ii)cite evidence of â-convergence in the U.S., (iii) and use USA county-level data containing over 3,000 cross-sectional observations to demonstrate that ó-convergence does not hold across the U.S., or within...

We offer the first direct evidence of an implicit contract in a goods market. The evidence we offer comes from the market for Coca-Cola. We demonstrate that the Coca-Cola Company left a substantial amount of written evidence of its implicit contract with its consumers—a very explicit form of...

We use county data with 3,058 observations to study growth and convergence in the US. We assess the effect of 40 conditioning variables on the counties’ balanced growth paths. Using OLS and 3SLS-IV, the later yielding consistent estimates, we report estimates for the full sample and for metro,...

We offer the first direct evidence of an implicit contract in a goods market. The evidence comes from the market for Coca-Cola. We demonstrate that the Coca-Cola Company left a written evidence of its implicit contract with its consumers—a very explicit form of an implicit contract. The...

Energy from fossil fuels have become dominant in the industrialised and industrialising economies of the world. However, fossil fuels are also recognised as heavily polluting and responsible for a range of modern environmental and health problems. Nuclear power is a similar conventional energy...

Recent literatures on entrepreneurship and economic growth estimate the empirical relationships between the following pairs of variables: (1) institutions and entrepreneurial activity; (2) institutions and economic growth; and (3) entrepreneurship and economic growth. This paper revisits each of...

In this paper we model the migration decisions of high-skilled women as a function of the benefits associated with moving from an origin with relatively low women's rights to a destination with a relatively high level of women's rights. However, the costs faced by women are decreasing in the...